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A California marketing firm linked to Bud Light’s disastrous tie-up with trans influencer Dylan Mulvaney has fired several top executives as part of a major restructuring, The Post has learned.
San Mateo-based Captiv8 — which canned 13 staffers in July after top brass returned from a lavish junket to the French Riviera, as The Post reported — axed 30 employees, roughly 20% of its workforce, in the latest round of layoffs, multiple sources told The Post.
It’s not clear whether Captiv8’s shakeup, which happened Sept. 28, was a direct result of the Mulvaney fiasco, which led to Bud Light losing its two-decade status as the nation’s top-selling beer.
“I’m guessing that Dylan Mulvaney contributed,” one laid-off executive told The Post. “They weren’t laying people off before [April 1] .”
Bud Light parent Anheuser-Busch blamed a third-party marketer for sending the transgender influencer a can of of Bud Light featuring an image of Mulvaney, which she touted to her millions of social media followers on April 1.
While Anheuser-Busch never named the firm, insiders told The Post that it was Captiv8 that introduced the beer giant to Mulvaney.
Captiv8 CEO Krishna Subramanian, who has never publicly addressed the Mulvaney controversy, told surviving staffers on a companywide Zoom call that the layoffs were necessary because the company is undergoing a “reorganization,” sources said.
“There were several department heads” who lost their jobs, one source said.
“All of us have watched Captiv8 spend a lot money on parties,” one fired worker told The Post, adding that “lavish spending has been consistent with this company.”
Captiv8 declined to comment on the recent round of layoffs. Subramanian did not respond to an email for comment.
The company had fired 5% of its staff in July — days after attending the ad industry’s Oscar-like annual Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity.
Captiv8 had chartered a private jet filled with swag to fly the company’s honchos, clients and influencers to the South of France — posting photos of fancy parties at villas and yachts.
The company had said the trip was “paid for in tandem with our brand partners and clients, having no impact on the company’s overall bottom line.”
Subramanian, who was a guest at the White House for a holiday party last Dec. 18, founded Captiv8 eight years ago.
The company boasts a database of more than 1 million influencers on YouTube, TikTok, Instagram and Twitter and counts McDonald’s, Disney, Toyota, Nordstrom, Macy’s and OceanSpray among its clients.
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